


Mini-Meta. The Hidden Darkness.

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Meta, Morals, Other, Seeing the dark side., Yin Yang.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 19:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20140678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: Another mini-meta, focusing on the ways our beloved boos are not all sugar and spice and everything nice. Both boys have some very sharp edges, and those edges help the story work...and keep it from going all saccharine.





	Mini-Meta. The Hidden Darkness.

There they are. The darlings. The ineffable husbands. We love ‘em, the darling boos. Of course we love ‘em.

Aziraphale, sweet and trying harder than any other angel in sight to actually be good—to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Giver of flaming swords. He who is kind toward demons. He who gives Heaven every single last chance he can to BE good, before giving up and allying outright with his Hellish counterpart.

And valiant Crowley, forever with too many questions, forever a fascinating blend of defensive cool and sark, and sudden flashes of sincere, heart-breaking desire to get it right, and to understand what “good” is. Lonely. The instigator of both the great Arrangement and the Conspiracy to Overturn the Apocalypse. Tender, wry man loving his Angel, indulging him, allowing himself to be wrapped around his Angel’s little finger.

These are valid truths about our boos. They’re real—so real it’s easy to ignore the darker elements Gaiman has woven into this new love story of angel and demon—a love story that moves so far from the original story.

I know that Aziraphale and Crowley have been a slash pairing to fans since the book was first published. But the book was far less committed to that romance—far more circumspect. Far more a matter of possibility. The new miniseries is a different basket of apples, with Gaiman, Sheen and Tennant all so open and adamant that this is a romance. A love story. That, yes—regardless of angels and demons being sexually null in their natural state, unless they “make an effort,” they are none-the-less romantic partners in an ineffable romcom orbiting the original story of the overthrow of the Apocalypse.

But Gaiman has written something more complicated than a simple romance. He’s also written the story of an Angel. And a Demon. Who are true to their natures, but in ways so subtle that people miss them.

I’m going to begin with Crowley, because he’s the simplest to illustrate.

Crowley is a tempter. From his first serpentine advances to Eve, he is a tempter. What people do not always notice is that he tempts Aziraphale, too. Absolutely, and constantly. Does he also love Aziraphale? Support him? Hunger for his company? Admire his kindness? Yes. But—he’s a tempter. A Hellish tempter—almost everything he does carries a clear and obvious element of devilish temptation, from the very first encounter. To see what I am saying, you have to push your focus in a no-romantic direction, though…like the weird twist of focus you need to bring out a three-d image.

The serpent approaches Aziraphale on the parapets. He may well just be looking for company. But his very first comment raises the question of God’s will in Eden. Most of Crawly’s conversation with the Angel is an invitation to doubt God—to doubt the ineffable plan. “That went over like a lead balloon.” Why the panto with the tree you can’t eat from? What if you did wrong and I did right?

Crowley’s first interaction with Aziraphale is a non-stop invitation to doubt God, and to complicate his own feelings about obedience and defiance to God. Was it right or wrong to give the sword to Adam?

If, on the one hand, all of that is the honest behavior of a doubter himself—it is also the confidence-eroding behavior of a tempter, setting Aziraphale up for millennia of complicated feelings about Heaven and God’s will.

As moderns, there are a lot of us who see those doubts as healthy, thank you very much. But in the paradigm of a real God, a real Heaven, a real Hell, a real temptation in Eden, the introduction of death into the world, and all the other powerful, meaningful elements of the mythology that will come through—Crowley is a tempter, and a very, very effective and subtle one.

Looked at in this frame of reference, Crowley is one long, provocative critique of God and Heaven, targeted quite brilliantly at Aziraphale’s own doubts. How can you kill even the children? How kind is it really to give a promissory “rain bow” assuring people that you’ll only destroy them ONCE by flood…and leaving all the other possible destructions out of the deal? What is so good about killing a very nice young country boy who didn’t get to see the kingdoms of the world Crowley shows him? Why kill people whose message is “Be kind to one another”?

What are we doing out here cancelling each other out? Why bother doing all these wiles and thwarting of wiles when it makes no difference? Let’s not—and say we did! It won’t change the outcome. What about grouping tasks for convenience, and you’ll tempt a bit, and I’ll bless a bit, and no one has to know…because as arranged it means nothing anyway.

Why not overthrow the Apocalypse?

Why not overthrow the Apocalypse by killing the boy?

Why not flee entirely, betraying our two sides, and go to Alpha Centauri together?

Really—why not kill the boy?

Kill the boy.

Never—NEVER ignore the fact that in the end Crowley succeeds in setting Aziraphale to kill Adam, and that Aziraphale is only saved from that guilt by Madam Tracy. Crowley successfully tempts Aziraphale into the decision to kill an eleven-year-old boy whose only real sin is having to struggle with the voices and pressures of his own tempters…and who’s actually won that moral battle.

Crowley tempts Aziraphale in dozens of ways, often quite openly. He is romantically flirting and teasing as early as the Garden.

Aziraphale is not so perfect and innocent himself, though. People have noticed—he quite likes having a rescuer who shows up in marvelous damsel in distress moments. He likes being admired. He flirts shamelessly, from Roman times at least on. He uses Crowley, while making it constantly clear that he does indeed consider himself “holier than thou.” He’s a bit of a show-off, and he takes undue pleasure in several sorts of “virtue signaling.” Whether he’s smirking just a little as he pulls out his pet vocabulary word, “Ineffable” as the trump card to silence the Serpent at the garden, or assuring Crowley how Heaven WILL win, and it will all be “rather lovely,” or giving a painfully pat, clichéd little victory speech about how evil plans will ALWAYS fall through some little thing left out…Aziraphale’s a bit of a superior shit. And he does mean it—he means it enough that, just as Crowley is trying to tempt him into killing Adam, Aziraphale has the nerve to try to insist Crowley do the killing on the air force base so that Heaven and Aziraphale can keep their hands clean. “I’m the nice one. I shouldn’t have to kill people.”

No. That morally inferior demon should do it for me.

It’s both cute and disturbing watching Aziraphale manipulate and pout his way to a clean jacket by way of demon miracle… It is more than a bit more disturbing watching Aziraphale try to turn Crowley into a murderer to save his own vain sense of moral superiority.

On the other hand—One thing that I think many of us, loving Crowley, find difficult to forgive Aziraphale is his denial of Crowley’s plan to just run away. He denies they are friends. He insists he doesn’t like Aziraphale. He stick with Heaven…and gives God every last chance to come through and be GOOD.

It’s easy, loving the demon, to feel Crowley should already be in line with all that. But it’s one thing for a rather good demon to choose to betray Hell. Hell is all about betrayals…and it’s evil. I mean, clearly, inarguably, there’s just nothing even remotely not-evil about Hell. Crowley can betray his side and on the one hand, still be acting within the nature of a demon (betrayals are programmed into the matrix) AND attempting to live up to his hidden good qualities. For Aziraphale to turn his back on Heaven, though? No matter how flawed Heaven, or how confusing God, they remain the only obvious groups dedicated to accomplishing any kind of good at all. Aziraphale would have to willingly revoke goodness to back up Crowley…A decision he makes only after having bent over backward to let Heaven or God show willing to demonstrate some real goodness.

He would not be an angel if he betrayed Heaven easily or willingly, or gave into temptation to run away from the conflict itself. Instead, he’s true to his angel nature even in the face of strong reason not to—just as he was true to his moral standards when he thwarts Heaven and gives away his sword, he also is true to his moral standards in giving Heaven and God one last chance, not just running off to Alpha Centauri.

What I am saying is that Gaiman’s written something that is far more complicated morally—and far better thought out—than it might appear on first sight, and he’s put in real effort to give his two lovers authentic angelic and demonic attributes—that are, indeed, made bearable and lovable because they are each ultimately impure. Only *BECAUSE* Crowley is really quite a nice fellow, for a demon, and Aziraphale is more than a bit of a bastard for an angel are they ABLE to creatively work outside the box, and save earth, and each other, and go on.

Because we love them, we want to see them as less dark, and less stark than Gaiman actually made them. And because Tennant and Sheen played them with such charm and such convincing tenderness, it’s easy to miss the darker cues. But they are there—and Sheen and Tennant appear to play them with just as much understanding and awareness as they play their lovable charisma.

And that’s a good thing. That’s part of what makes the characters, the story, the relationship, and the moral of Good Omens both funny AND powerful.

Unrelated addendum: Ok, where you yourself feel a transition occurred is not only your own choice--there is no reason it has to be a firm choice. I can think ten conflicting things about a narrative at any given time and change my mind on the turn of a fanfic. That said:

  
Many of us are happy to go with Sheen's argument that Aziraphale truly falls in love with Crowley in the church during the Blitz. Others like both boys to have fallen in love on the parapets of the garden itself. Most seem to go with at least Crowley being gone on the angel from the start or soon thereafter.  
  
But it occurred to me that you could argue that Crowley doesn't realize he is downright in love with Aziraphale until Aziraphale gives him the thermos flask of holy water; that until that point, when Aziraphale sacrifices his own morals, his own feelings, his own standards-sets it all aside to try to protect Crowley. In which case, prior to that point even if he was more in love than he realized, in his own mind he was gaming the angel...just as, to a degree, Aziraphale was gaming him. Angel and demon attracted, flirting, with a lot in common, but neither one succumbing until the Blitz and the thermos...  
  
In the same sense, are there any other promising looking turning points for these two? To me, the very best is to combine the two--say they were both smitten in Eden, but that only the years of companionship and the emotional progress from the point where Crowley asks for holy water on, are sufficient to push them out of their safe zones into realizing they're in love--and only the Apocalapse was enough to force them into fulfilling the promise implied a century before.   
  
What-cha think?


End file.
